Absolutely Safe
by Clumsy Robot
Summary: Three years after the apocalypse of MOTHER 3, the world has started over.
1. The Helmet in the Attic

A/N: First fanfiction.

A/N no.2: Took this story down for a while because I thought this chapter needed more... editing, and stuff.

. . .

The birds were chirping. For some reason, this was comforting to him; they sounded so innocent, familiar almost. If he closed his eyes, he could pretend that the world was pure. How he valued purity. He could ignore the graffiti carved into the trees and the soda cans thrown haphazardly on the ground. The disgusting residue of the teenage community, probably - _that was some pretty nice phrasing, Lucas, give yourself a pat on the back._

Lucas was sixteen years old, but he never considered himself as one of _them._

His footsteps crunched lightly on the weedy ground. The undergrowth was thick, the branches precarious, but he didn't really consider going back. Danger was no longer a problem for him. If anything, it gave him a faint buzz, awoke something vital and electric within his nerves. Maybe he missed it.

For three years, he had been living an entirely normal life. Going to the local high school, meeting new people, attending birthday parties and friendly get-togethers - all mundane, all maddeningly unnecessary. He wasn't sure what he really wanted to do, but every day he would turn on the radio and let his stomach twist in a kind of self-torturing fascination. Twelve murders last week. Corruption unearthed in the federal government. Identity fraud. Dishonesty.

He felt like a failure.

Lucas looked around the thin patch of trees and bit his lip. If what Ness said was accurate, he needed to get ready. Equipment check: cell phone? Check. Backpack? Check. Wooden stick (with its top poking out of the backpack, wobbly against the half-closed zipper)? Check.

Ahead of him was a clearing, so bare that it looked artificial. The earth had been ripped up - Lucas pictured a giant, grinding machine with metal teeth. Vestiges of weeds grew weakly at the sidelines. The clearing formed a perfectly circle of clumpy earth, spanning a radius of nearly ten meters.

In the middle of the circle was a huge gray contraption. Round. Cute, almost. It would have wobbled, if it hadn't been partially buried the dirt. His mind processed everything in a jerky series of panicked thinking. Plastic and metal and glass - or is it all glass? It's so shiny, I can't tell what's inside, all the sunlight is reflecting off that little round window and the glass has been dulled, look there's a picture of a pig's snout under the window -

Instinctively he grabbed his stick from his backpack and squeezed it until an imprint of the stick-bark had been left on his palm.

_Haven't I gotten rid of this? It's supposed to be gone now, didn't it disappear with everything else three years ago, didn't everything start over -_

For a moment Lucas wanted to kick himself. Stupid, _stupid_. Everything else might have started over, maybe, but not this. This was the Absolutely Safe Capsule. This was indestructible.

. . .

.

_At some point he must have seen the dragon's face, but he couldn't remember it. Everything that happened after the dragon's great back hunched in the air - gone. Covered by a thick, dark fog. He knew that the world must have ended, that this-or-that must have happened, but it was like an old childhood memory: a story you've heard so many times that you've tricked yourself into believing you remember._

_._

. . .

Lucas lived in the suburbs. His house had the same design as every other house in the neighborhood; it was plain and orderly, a little worn-out but not unreasonably so. On warmer nights Boney slept in a doghouse in the backyard. Last summer the wooden fence in the back was infested with termites, so Lucas's father started taking down the wooden slats and putting up a new one.

Unlike his house, Lucas's family wasn't ordinary. His ninth-grade guidance counselor had commented on it before, her brows creased with worry: "He's too quiet and reserved. He's only got his father. He won't tell me what happened to his mother. We have a twin brother named Claus registered in the school files, but I'm beginning to believe that Claus doesn't really exist."

Lucas kept a helmet in the attic. It sat in the darkest corner, underneath a cape, gathering dust.

. . .

Early in the morning, Lucas trudged to his bus stop. His oversized grey hoodie, which he wore over his favorite tee, flopped aimlessly as he went along. His backpack sagged at his shoulders. Somehow he didn't feel much like a morning person.

There was someone already waiting. Lucas's neighbor, Ness: some guy around the same age who liked baseball and video games. Lucas didn't care about either, so for him the most arresting thing about Ness was that stupid hat he wore all the time.

Naturally, he and Ness were best friends.

"Hey, Lucas!" said Ness. "Excited for the English test? Are you ready? Did you sleep at all?"

"Stayed up studying," Lucas mumbled.

"Yeah, everyone said that this was going to be a pretty hard test," Ness said with a smile. "You're probably gonna do really well, though, since you're smart."

"No, I just do the work..."

Ness shrugged dismissively. "No, you're pretty smart."

The bus finally clattered down the street (ten minutes late, Lucas noted). The bus door slid open with a creak; pounding up the metal steps, Ness made a point to grab the first empty three-seater he could find. "Hey! Lucas!"

A bemused Lucas sat next to him. He had long ago ceased trying to understand why Ness thought they were friends. They didn't have anything in common, after all.

Beside him, Ness talked on and on, filling the air with empty chatter in a way that, somehow, felt perfectly comfortable to the both of them.

"By the way, you won't believe what I saw in the woods yesterday," said Ness. "There was, like, this giant clearing, and in the middle was like a giant metal thing shaped like a pill, and there was a picture of a pink pig's snout on it for some reason -"

Lucas's heart stopped. "Can you repeat that?"

. . .

The Absolutely Safe Capsule sat quietly in the clearing - innocently, almost. It was like a mirage from a past memory; Lucas blinked, incredulous, but it remained standing, unmoving and unchanged. The capsule was exactly the same, save for a few scratches and brown-green grass stains dotting its surface. His hands shook - oh god, oh god, it's still here, I wonder what's inside it ohgod IT'S STILL HERE IT'SSTILLHEREIT'STILL-

.

.

.

It took Lucas a minute to realize that he had ran, panting, towards his house.

Flint had gone out to buy groceries. Lucas opened the front door with shaking hands and looked around frantically until he found Boney, lying patiently on a couch. Lucas fell on the couch next to his dog and curled up into a ball.

He cried. Wet shuddery noises came out of his mouth, and his face drew together, and he cried like a little kid. Like a nine-year-old.

He hadn't cried in three years.


	2. Fourside Tech, Co

Ness leaned back in his seat, enjoying the sun streaming merrily from the window. One hand played idly with the rim of his baseball cap. The other gently cupped Paula's shoulder. The ordinary background noise of an ordinary cafe faded in and out around him: people talking, people eating, people drinking coffee and ordering food and navigating around reasonably-crowded tables.

"So, what would you like?" said a bored-looking waitress as she made her way over to their table.

Poo, like always, ordered first. "A bowl of decent rice gruel, please," he said smoothly while softly tapping his fingers on the table.

The waitress glared at him with the intensity of a wild bear. "For the fiftieth time, we do not serve rice gruel here, and if you threaten to call the manager over here -"

"That was _one time_ -"

The waitress's pink hair seemed to flare above her head as she snorted, annoyed. "Shut up, Poo." She turned her head and smiled brightly at the three other people at the table, seemingly oblivious to Poo's exaggerated scowl. "So! What about you guys? What would you like?"

Jeff was tinkering with a pile of gears he had spread out on the table. "Coffee with a lot of caffeine and sugar and caffeine," he muttered, his eyes still glued on his little contraption.

"Steak," Ness said.

"I'll just have some pasta, thanks," Paula said apologetically. She looked over at Jeff and quickly added, "Also, make sure to get actual food for Jeff."

"Anything specific?"

Paula just shrugged. "Whatever's easiest."

Kumatora scribbled down their orders on a little notepad. "No problem, Paula." Giving one last exasperated glance at Poo, she went off into the kitchens.

"She ignored my order," Poo muttered darkly. "I need to notify her about her poor customer service..."

Despite the good two minutes Poo wasted mumbling about stupid dye jobs and unbecoming smirks, it soon became clear that no one was paying attention to him. Jeff, finally snapping out of his reverie, was busy asking Paula why she had ordered for him; Paula pointed out how skinny he was; Ness enthused over the glories of steak and heavily recommended Jeff to try some; there was a crashing sound as someone dropped something in the kitchen...

There was a loud cough from Ness. The group fell silent. Ness cleared his throat, as if preparing himself for a speech.

"So," said Ness in a voice ten times more dramatic than anyone would ever use in real life, "my friends, you might be wondering why I called you all here today."

He was met with three clueless stares. "Wait, so this wasn't just a friendly get-together?" Jeff asked. "You should really be more clear on these things, Ness, if there's anything going on -"

"No, we're not just hanging out! This is important! This is life-changing!" Ness leaned closer in to the table and lowered his voice. "We're here to discuss..."

Purposely waiting a beat, he savored the dramatic effect his words were creating. Every syllable that fell from his lips dropped like the next hailstone in a storm. "We're here to discuss... whether or not.. Jeff is..." He was speaking in a nearly inaudible whisper. "Whether or not Jeff is going out with anyone."

An immediate reaction from Jeff. Red-faced, he said, "No, that's not true."

Ness just snorted.

"He really likes you," Paula added. "You two should go out."

Jeff put his head down on the table and made a few wet strangled noises before saying, "You guys..."

There was friendly laughter, and Paula managed to coax Jeff's face up from the table, and the waitress came back bearing their orders and a bowl of rice (telling Poo to go and "gruel it yourself"), and the cafe-turned-restaurant was flourishing. It was a brilliant Saturday afternoon, and Ness was enjoying every bit of it.

. . .

Lucas stared at the side of the house.

A camera stared back at him.

Lucas took a few steps to the right.

The camera was motionless.

Lucas ran to the leftmost end of his backyard.

The camera's one unblinking eye turned, following him.

A slam of a door and Lucas was back inside his house, wondering heavily to himself whether he was paranoid.

There was, apparently, a camera installed on the side of his neighbor's house. The camera was not there yesterday. It had probably been set up during the night. It faced his bedroom window. It was an ordinary black security camera, as plain as day on the side of his neighbor's house, and for some reason, it was following him.

"Ugh," mumbled Lucas, slumped against his front door. He pulled his fingers through his hair and thought. He didn't know what to do.

"Ugh," he said again.

. . .

Kumatora's work shift was almost over when her cell phone buzzed in her pocket. _Try again later, moron,_ she thought. A stack of plates smeared with leftovers wobbled in her hands. _I'm kind of busy right now. _

Her cell phone buzzed again. And again. And again...

After dumping the plates in the cafe's oversize sink, she reached wearily in her pocket and got her phone. The glowing screen was politely informing her that she had seven missed calls, all from the same person. The caller ID read "BLOND KID".

Kumatora sighed and resigned herself to her fate. She took the call.

"Hello?"

A nervous voice exploded from the other end of the line. "Kumatora! There's something wrong!"

Kumatora's gaze wandered around the inside of the kitchen. Frankly, it had been a horrible day, working a crappy job at a semi-decent restaurant, and currently she still had to go home and worry about what to do with the heating bills. "Lucas, I'm kind of pissed right now, so if you're calling about some stupid technology thing again, I'm gonna hang up."

"No, this isn't the Happy Box! I'm not talking about the Happy Box!" Despite the restaurant noise and the tinny sound quality of her cell phone, there was something in Lucas's voice that arrested her attention. Raw, pleading. Whatever his reason for calling was, it wasn't stupid. It wasn't baseless paranoia or a technology issue or a rant about how disappointingly bad the world continued to be. It was serious...

It terrified him.

Kumatora softened. "It's okay, Lucas, it's okay... what is it?"

"Everything's coming back," Lucas said. He sounded detached, weary. A world apart from his old idealistic self. Kumatora wished she could give him a hug.

"I saw the Absolutely Safe Capsule," Lucas continued. "It was in a clearing. I could probably lead it to you again, if you want to go see it. Porky's probably still in there."

Kumatora's mouth went dry. The possibility that it still existed had never occurred to her, not even as a passing fancy after a night spent watching too many apocalyptic horror movies. She thought she was over that stuff. This wasn't fair.

"Also," Lucas added, "I think my neighbor's spying on me. But I'm not too sure about that one."

"I'll be at your house in thirty minutes," Kumatora said briskly, trying not to sound nervous. "See ya."

Kumatora's world was spinning. A hurried drive back to her home, a change of clothes - on a whim, she threw on a purple hoodie and pink rainboots, just for old times' sake. Then, she was back into the car, pressing a little too hard on the accelerator pedal, making turns that were a little too sharp. Pulling up onto Lucas's driveway.

Lucas opened the door for her before she could knock. "Hi," he greeted. He looked perfectly composed. "Thanks for coming."

"Um, where's Flint?" asked Kumatora.

Lucas shrugged. "He's at work. He got a job, remember? I called Duster, too, but it'll take him a little longer to get here. Sorry if I made you leave work early."

"My shift was almost finished. It doesn't matter."

He looked at her with his eyes wide, almost owlish. "So, got any ideas?"

For some inexplicable reason, Kumatora's mind rewound to those kids she was serving at the restaurant. They went there pretty often. Really, they were an eclectic bunch, and she would never have expected them to be a group of friends. Rice-Gruel Boy, in particular, looked like he had come from the other side of the world.

"Wait, did you find the capsule yourself, or did someone tell you about it?" asked Kumatora carefully.

"Oh, Ness just told me. He was out exploring or something. I don't even know what he does in his free time."

"Ness is your neighbor, isn't he? And he found the capsule?" Something was forming at the back of Kumatora's head, but she didn't dare say it out loud.

Lucas just nodded.

How many people knew about the Absolutely Safe Capsule, though? How many people really knew about it and the terrifying creature it held inside? The answer was three: Lucas, Kumatora, Duster, and one exceptionally faithful dog. And yet those four kids at the restaurant... When she first met them, they got along smoothly. She had exchanged more real conversations with them than with all the other customers combined. Ness, Paula, Jeff and Poo seemed familiar, almost, but in the most alien way possible.

"Talk to Ness and his friends about it," she said. She swallowed a bundle of nervous energy that was threatening to crawl up her throat. "Don't worry too much about it right now."

Blank-faced, Lucas looked at her, a question in his eyes. "Not worry? But - but the capsule, and the camera, and..."

Kumatora gripped his shoulders. Her mind was made up. "Listen, something weird might be going on, but nothing has actually happened. Not yet."

Biting his lip, Lucas said, "You're right."

. . .

She stormed back into her house, slamming the door behind her. A series of mumbled swears staggered out of her mouth.

Grumbling, she slammed her hand on the telephone and punched in a few numbers.

"Hello? ...It's me, moron. You know that conspiracy crap you told me about earlier? Uh, well, you might be right."

She heard him snicker from the other end of the phone. What a moron.

. . .

An order had come in at Fourside Tech, Co. Someone wanted a custom-made camera to replace the one already installed on the side of his house. The company president scratched his head at the request, but money was money.

He had the new camera mailed to Onett within a week.


End file.
